In the New Testament
the Holy Spirit is often referenced with the personal pronoun “he,” “him,” or
“himself.” Many will point to this as proof for the Trinity. For example,
in John 14:16-17 Yahshua stated, “And I will
pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide
with you forever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive,
because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth
with you, and shall be in you.” The “whom” here refers to the comforter, which
comes from the Greek parakletos, a masculine word in Greek.
Referring to inanimate objects in
the masculine and
feminine is not unusual. We find it in many languages. For example, in Italian
the words for “love,” “sea,” and “sun,” are masculine and the words for “art,”
“faith,” and “light” are feminine. In like manner, in Arabic, which contains no
neuter gender, the words for “book,” “class,” “street” are masculine while the
words “car,” “university,” and “city” are feminine.
Similarly, Hebrew, a Semitic
language that shares many
parallels with Arabic, including being without the neuter gender, has many
cases where inanimate objects are rendered in the masculine or feminine.
Masculine examples include the words for “word,” “day,” and “room.” Instances
of the feminine include “land,” “animal,” and “spirit.” Even though the word
for spirit (Heb. ruach) is feminine in the Hebrew language, Judaism
views ruach as an inanimate object, i.e., wind.
Likewise, parakletos is
masculine in Greek, notwithstanding,
its usage is neuter. Translators with preconceived ideas about the Spirit would
use “he” when they had no justification to do so. While many follow the pattern
found in the King James Version in rendering the Holy Spirit in the masculine,
a few translations correctly render it in the neuter, including the Diaglott,
Rotherham, Goodspeed, and Literal Concordant.
In addition to the above references, there are three instances in the
KJV where it correctly refers to the Holy Spirit in the neuter. The first is
found in Matthew 10:20, “For it is not ye that speak, but
the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” Instead of “who,” the
translators correctly used the form “which” in reference to the Spirit. The
last two examples are both found in the eighth chapter of Romans, “The Spirit
itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of
Elohim…Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what
we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for
us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (vv. 16, 26).